Lia was falling. That was how she knew she was dreaming. When she was awake, Lia never fell. And besides. Arthur was holding on to her.

This dream felt real though, real and long and pitch black like the Winterfell crypts, and she was falling fast, wind roaring in her ears and stinging her cheeks.

Fly, came a pockmarked voice close to her ear. How amusing. Lia could do a great many things, but she did not know how to fly.

The black was paling around her, and soon grey, smoky mist twisted like dancing snakes before her. Strange. She had dreamed of falling before, but never through this sort of darkness. It was cold, this sky through which she dropped, and sunless. Her face hurt, and her fingers and toes were stiff from the wind. For the first time, Lia was aware that she was very, very alone.

"Arthur?" She did not like how small her voice was.

Arthur Stark is not here. There is only you.

"If it's only me, then who are you?"

Too many questions. Fly, Elia Stark, before you fall.

She chuckled into the nothingness and rolled her eyes.

"Silly, I won't fall. This is only a dream."

And if it isn't? asked the voice.

When she really looked again, she saw the ground below her, hazy and brown in the distance. It was thousands of miles away, surely, but still, Lia thought it was closer than it had been. She couldn't see the ground before. She felt her smile fade. Something like fear settled in her stomach.

"I…I'm a person, not a bird. I can't fly."

How do you know? Have you tried?

The voice was high and thin as a bowstring. Lia looked around, trying to see where it was coming from. A crow circled around her, following her down as she fell. Beyond the bird, she could see mountains now, their snow-covered tops white like bone. In the dark woods, a river glinted like silver thread. Closer. She was closer to the ground than ever before, and suddenly she did not know if her eyes watered from the wind or the sinking dread.

Best fly before it's too late.

"Easy for you to say," she snapped. "You were born with wings."

Maybe you were, too.

Frowning, she twisted her head around to look at her back, her stiff arms wrapping around her shoulders, searching for feathers.

Not wings like mine, said the crow, but she ignored him.

Her arms were strange, she saw—too thin, and the skin on them sallow-looking. She stared at her fingernails. Too long, and too clean, surely. And where had her callouses gone? She tried to remember. Suddenly, other voices broke through the mist: a woman's, moaning as if she were in a soft sort of pain, and a man's, golden with laughter. "All this talk is getting very tiresome, sister. Come here and be quiet."

Lia gasped, for she knew the woman was not in pain, and for a second she did not know if she was falling down or up, and her head exploded in luminous pain. The crow came at her then, cawing and beating the air about her, his feathers surely cutting bloody lines on her cheek. The voices faded from her mind, sand slipping through fingers, and no matter how she tried Lia could not hold them.

"Hey! I needed to remember that!"

No, forget that, forget it. You mustn't remember that now.

"You can't just—" Yet he could—he did. He pecked at the burning, bloody spot on her forehead, pecking, pecking, until he pulled the memory clean out of her head like a worm. The feeling made her stomach churn, and wet dread squished in her gut.

"You…vile…pig!"

I'm a crow, in reality.

She sniffed, determined to remain dignified in the face of such mortification, and her vexation pushed out the fear.

"Just as well. I've offended pigs by calling you one. You're much uglier."

Is that any way for a young lady to speak, Elia Stark?

"Stop calling me that. Only Father and Amma call me that."

It is your name. It is what I will call you.

"Why must you call me anything at all?"

Because I am teaching you how to fly.

"I told you, I can't fly!"

You're flying now.

"I'm falling!"

To fly you must first fall. Look down.

She did not wish to look down.

LOOK DOWN!

For a moment she persisted, but curiosity took over, and she complied. How she wished she had not.

The cold swooped beneath her skin, burrowing into her back and neck and stomach. She was going to be sick. The ground came spinning up to meet her, a tapestry of browns and greens dusted with white and sprinkled with humanity. All was crisp before her eyes, coming closer and closer, faster and faster. The trees were hung suddenly with bones, thousands of white bones, the bones of all those before her who had crashed and left their broken bodies amid the woods. She screamed, her voice dying as soon as it left her mouth, but then the green of the forest engulfed her, and suddenly Lia was falling no longer.

She was running, hooves thumping the soft soil, and the wind no longer cut her skin but smoothed against her winter pelt, cooling her sweating hide. The woods thinned around her, and she came to a clearing where the dew winked in the morning sun, a rainbow in each droplet. She came across a boulder, and stuck out her tongue to lick the salty ambrosia from its surface.

In a flash, she was off once more, but this time her movements were bouncing and light, and her paws before her were white as daisies. She heard everything in the forest—every rustle of a branch, every chirp of a cricket and splash in the nearby lake. She heard, too, the screaming barks of foxes, and felt the fear spur her legs as she ran faster.

Then she was no longer running, but hopping, her toes slick, gripping onto the muddy ground. In an instant she dove into the lake, her strong legs kicking out behind her, propelling her forward, until she had legs no more, but a tail that swished as she scoured the water for feed.

The water blurred, swirling, and she was dry again, and solid ground was beneath her paws, firm and cool. Smells were vivid in her mind—the sharp resin of pines, the first touch of rot on the fallen leaves, the delicious musk of rabbits scampering through the brush. She walked forward though, over the mossy softness, and suddenly she was home, for she could smell her littermates and humans through her twitching nose, and the place her mother used to lie. She knew this place, this endless rock built by men looming before her, and she followed the familiar smells through its opening and up its stony ridges.

Human voices blended like water in her ears, but each scent was distinct, and she knew when she passed the male with fire on his head, or the male who smelled of heat even though his eyes were grey, or the tall female who plucked sweet berries of sound from the vines of her strange tree.

She padded through the stone caves, and no one challenged her. She wished to find her girl. Her girl had not played with her in many days, for all she did was sleep. Yet before she could come to the wooden wall that usually stood in her path, a voice called to her, high and thin, and suddenly all was a blur of intoxicating smells and sounds until there was nothing but chill air.

The crow was back, circling her, and Lia cried out, her stomach swooping, her insides a mushy mess. She was falling once more.

Fly, girl, fly, cawed the crow.

"But…I…"

Yet suddenly it was the easiest thing in the world, flying, for instead of arm she, too, had wings. They were covered in downy feathers that fluttered in the wind, and when she turned her head she saw they stretched wide into the endless blue of the winter day.

She laughed then, and the sound was a sharp call escaping her beak.

"Oh, I can fly!" she wanted to say, but her tongue could not make human words, not now. She soared above the expanse of man-rock filled with humans, small as stars, and onwards she flew, over the dales and woods and the red leaves of the oldest tree that had been here since before her mother's mother a thousand times over had flown through these skies.

South she flew, over rivers and marshes, their damp smells of mud and strange flowers wafting up like steam. Further, and there was the island on the lake, but she dared not fly over it, for there was something ancient and unknown amid the ageless trees. South, south, over rustling forests and fields of marigolds and wheat, and south still, until there were mountains the colour of oxblood, and beyond that the sands that blew heat and dust into her eyes.

She turned east then, over stony foothills, and before her the sea opened up, churning and endless, dotted with pebbles for islands. Her talons had turned to red webbed feet, her feathers from rusty brown to grey. When she opened her mouth, she tasted the salty air and met it with a squawking, jubilant cry.

She glided over the sea, feeling the warm caress of the air soft on the soft fuzz of her head, and she felt herself shiver with pleasure, shaking out her feathers. When she surveyed the new expanse of land, she was suddenly small, or huge, or fierce, or timid, and she had talons of a hundred different sizes and feathers of brown or black or blue or cream.

Below her were flatlands and deserts, and man-rocks gilded with snow-white stone and golden sun. And beyond that was an ocean of waving grasses, sprinkled with men on horses, and farther still were seas the colour of jadestone, and a cluster of rocks made from the night itself, shrouded in darkness, where she dared not go. Creatures fiercer than she stirred there, hot and deadly.

Finally, she headed north, the wind chilling even under her blanket of down. On and on she soared, the man-wall of ice glistening like a solid sea, yet she could fly higher than man could ever build. She pressed on, over the trees bowing with the weight of snow on their limbs, over the frozen rivers and fields that yielded not a single mouse. The white expanse was resplendent, shimmering and grand, and she laughed again, her calls bouncing across the snow.

She stopped then, half blinded by light, for surely she was at the end of the world. A waterfall of the coldest cold stretched before her.

Fly on, the sliver of the girl inside heard a thin voice say. Fly on.

But the girl would not fly on. There was nothing but lightless death beyond, and she knew that if she saw that death there would be no more laughter. Only despair. The girl would not fly on.

Impertinent girl, do as I say

"I don't want to," Lia whispered. "You can't make me."

And at once she was no longer soaring over the snow but falling once more, falling through a darkness so complete now that even the grey mist did not swirl.

Impertinent girl! cawed the infernal crow. You did not fly beyond. You did not see it all. It will not do.

"No," said Lia, and despite his vexed gaze she beamed at him. "I have seen enough, and it was wonderful. I need not see more. That would ruin it all."

Falling, still falling, yet somehow Lia was cold no longer. Her hands touched fabric, she thought, and her feet were toasty warm.

I am not done with you. You flew, when so many others fell. You will see.

"You can't make me," Lia said again, but the crow was flying far from her, and she only heard the thin voice like a wisp of grey smoke.

Do not be so sure.

A sliver of cold embedded itself into her chest, and Lia shivered. For a moment she was very, very afraid, but the crow had gone, and soon the fear had faded too.

She did not know if she fell now or simply floated, suspended in softness. A sliver of jewelled light opened in the darkness, stretching wider and rounder, until finally Lia stared into heather-purple eyes so light they were almost blue. Her head spun, fuzzy like frosted windows, but those eyes were bright and sharp, and she knew them as well as her own mind.

"Arthur?"

Fingers came up to rub at those eyes.

"Am I dreaming?"

"I was just dreaming. You're clearly not."

Silence. Then,

"Lia?"

She smiled at him, though it was a great effort to move her face. So shocked he was. It was always fun when Art's face looked as if you had broken his brain.

The room around her exploded then, her mother's and father's cries enveloping her until she was heated through and through. A wet tongue was on her face, and she felt hot tears on her shoulder, but she was too dizzy and weak to care much. The bed was soft beneath her legs, but solid, and all around her were familiar arms and warm, wonderful voices, none of them like the pockmarked sound that still echoed at the base of her head.

Her father clutched her to him now, his chest solid like a wall, and Lia was reminded how silly she had been to ever feel afraid. Over his strong shoulder, she saw Arthur standing at the foot of her bed, his face still a mask of shock. Beside him, Dawn cocked his silvery head, curious eyes round.

"Guess what?" she asked him, and despite her tired body she could feel the laughter bubbling in her chest. Oh, if only he had come with her. It was the one thing that could have made the dream any better.

"Oh Artie, I can fly!"

Happy New Year everyone! Hope 2021 is better for all of us.

The past couple of months have been actually insane for me and writing this fic. Thank you so much for reading thus far, and a huge thanks especially to those of you who comment. One of the most rewarding thing about writing and posting is receiving comments and getting to engage in this fandom with all of you :)

And of course, thank you so so so much to my betas (Captain Fuckew McHugerage and CMedina) for helping me come up with ideas and for dealing with writer's antics. I don't think this fic would have progressed this far without you!